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Aboriginal Healing Practices and Australian Bush Medicine

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Aboriginal Healing Practices and Australian Bush Medicine Philip Clarke- Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine Philip Clarke South Australian Museum Abstract Colonists who arrived in Australia from 1788 used the bush to alleviate shortages of basic supplies, such as building materials, foods and medicines. They experimented with types of material that they considered similar to European sources. On the frontier, explorers and settlers gained knowledge of the bush through observing Aboriginal hunter-gatherers. Europeans incorporated into their own ‘bush medicine’ a few remedies derived from an extensive Aboriginal pharmacopeia. Differences between European and Aboriginal notions of health, as well as colonial perceptions of ‘primitive’ Aboriginal culture, prevented a larger scale transfer of Indigenous healing knowledge to the settlers. Since British settlement there has been a blending of Indigenous and Western European health traditions within the Aboriginal community. Introduction This article explores the links between Indigenous healing practices and colonial medicine in Australia. Due to the predominance of plants as sources of remedies for Aboriginal people and European settlers, it is chiefly an ethnobotanical study. The article is a continuation of the author’s cultural geography research that investigates the early transference of environmental knowledge between Indigenous hunter- gatherers and British colonists (1994: chapter 5; 1996; 2003a: chapter 13; 2003b; 2007a: part 4; 2007b; 2008). The flora is a fundamental part of the landscape with which human culture develops a complex set of relationships. In Aboriginal Australia, plants physically provided people with the means for making food, medicine, narcotics, stimulants, 3 Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia Vol. 33 - 2008 Philip Clarke- Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine adornment, ceremonial objects, clothing, shelter, tools, and for creating artwork. Symbolically, plants feature heavily in Aboriginal myths and religious beliefs. Australia’s flora is unique and highly diverse, qualities which are also present in the Aboriginal pharmacopeia. Pharmacologists have found that many of the Australian plants used in Indigenous remedies have a chemical basis (Barr et al 1988; Clarke 2003c; 2008: chapter 10; Henshall et al 1980; Kyriazis 1995; Levitt 1981: chapter 9; Rose 1987; Watson 1994; Webb 1960). Indigenous Health Systems At the most basic level, people in the world recognise three main categories for the causes of illness: natural, human and supernatural (Clarke 2007a: 96-7; Clements 1932). In many societies the origin of disease is perceived as a mixture of human and supernatural agencies. For the latter, sickness is blamed on such things as sorcery, breaches of religious sanctions and social rules of behaviour, intrusions of spirits and disease-objects, or loss of soul. In Aboriginal Australia, the swift and inexplicable onset of serious illness was generally attributed to supernatural reasons. Before European settlement, the isolated and dispersed nature of Aboriginal populations would have meant that there were fewer fatal diseases than in comparison with pre-industrial agricultural societies, which were characterised as sedentary and living in high densities in close proximity to livestock (Cleland 1953: 399; Crosby 2004: 285; Diamond 1998: 87, 92, 164, 195-214, 330, 355, 357). 4 Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia Vol. 33 - 2008 Philip Clarke- Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine Notions of health and sickness are shaped by entrenched cultural beliefs and traditions. For instance, contemporary Western Europeans will consider a headache to be the result of stress, high blood pressure or in the worst case a brain tumour. Traditional Aboriginal notions of feeling sick are quite different, with such head pain often explained in terms of sorcery or perhaps from a malevolent spirit having entered the head (Cawte 1974, 1996; Clarke 2007a: 96-105; Maher 1999; Reid 1979, 1982, 1983; Wiminydji & Peile 1978). Determination of the cause of an ailment leads to establishing how it is to be treated. In the Western Desert, healers deal with headaches by blowing their breath across the patient’s head to remove a foreign spirit or mamu, followed by neck massage and the manipulation of ‘strings’ believed to control the blood flow to the brain (Ngaanyatjarra et al 2003: 15). Aboriginal people believe that the protection of an individual’s spirit is fundamental to their health. In the Macdonnell Ranges of Central Australia, Arrernte woman Veronica Perrurle Dobson explained that: The healer cures the sick person by getting the sick person’s spirit and placing it back into their body, making them well again. A child loses their spirit when someone frightens them when they are sleeping. It’s the same for an adult, especially older people (Dobson 2007: 11). Aboriginal people in the southern Western Desert have similar beliefs concerning the spirit. They also claim that disease can be something physical, like a piece of wood lodged in a person’s body (Ngaanyatjarra et al 2003: 20). They assert that 5 Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia Vol. 33 - 2008 Philip Clarke- Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine such an illness can be removed by a healer’s sucking, and then its essence disposed by throwing it away in the wind. In Aboriginal Australia illness is sometimes associated with particular winds. Arrernte people consider that the northwest wind, aretharre, is the ‘bad one’ (Dobson 2007: 23-4). It blows in early spring and people who suffer from its dust are treated with a healing song. It is a tradition of the Ngarinman people living in the Victoria River area in the Northern Territory that serious colds originate from a place associated with the Bad Cold Dreaming (Rose 1987: 9). Aboriginal people widely believe that the disruption of the power surrounding religious places or sites will cause serious illness to their spirit (see Memmott 1982 regarding the Wellesley Islanders). In desert Aboriginal communities it is reasoned that people suffering from hunger and thirst will have a hot heart, which can be made cooler by drinking water. Aboriginal man Wiminydji and Father Tony Peile of the Balgo Hills Mission in Western Australia claimed that the ‘notion of being cold is the essential concept of Aboriginal health and well-being. This concept is very different to Western ideas where with physiological foundation, a balance – not too warm and not too cold – is considered healthy’ (Wiminydji & Peile 1978: 506). Gugadja people at the Mission are reported to say Ngala baldja-riwa dulbu-dju-ra yalda-djura, meaning ‘Eat and become full, it makes the heart cold’ (Wiminydji & Peile 1978: 506-7). The consumption of animal blood is widely believed in desert communities to help in ‘cooling’ the body (Tonkinson 1982: 226). Related to this belief, red ochre, which is typically associated with the ‘blood’ of spirit Ancestors (Clarke 1989: 1- 6 Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia Vol. 33 - 2008 Philip Clarke- Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine 2; 2003a: 93; Sagona 1994), is combined with fat and applied to the body for a ‘cooling’ effect. When the heart and spirit are considered ‘hot’, it is thought that this condition will affect other parts of the body, particularly the head. Desert dwellers often express the health condition of individuals in terms of hotness and coldness. Aboriginal people in the northern deserts consider that the roots of young ‘wild curry’ kurrajong (Brachychiton multicaulis) trees are a ‘cool food’, because eating them makes you feel refreshed (Wightman, Dixon et al 1992: 10-11). In northern Australia the treatment for headaches caused by hunger, thirst or sickness, is to wrap the head with snakevine (Tinospora smilacina) stem (Laramba Community Women 2003: 34; Levitt 1981: 55, 101; Nyinkka Nyunyu 2003; Wiminydji & Peile 1978: 509). This woody climber has a milky latex sap with a cooling property utilised to treat various ailments (Barr et al 1988: 204-7; Lassak & McCarthy 1983: 42-3; Reid 1977: 6, 112-13; Webb 1969: 142-3). In spite of the differences between Indigenous and modern Western European explanations of healing mechanisms, we know that many Aboriginal plant remedies, such as from the snakevine (Image 1), have proven abilities to cure patients when properly used. Aboriginal people consume tonics to maintain their general health and body function. To invigorate themselves, Aboriginal people in southern South Australia described taking ‘blood medicine’ that could be made from thistle (Sonchus species) stems or pale flax-lily (Dianella longifolia) roots (Clarke 1986a: 9-10; 1986b, 43, 45; 1987: 6, 9: 2003b: 89, 91; 2003c: 31). Tonics are taken to maintain good health rather than as a 7 Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia Vol. 33 - 2008 Philip Clarke- Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine remedy for an existing ailment, so they are strictly speaking not medicines. Image 1 - Snakevine, which has a milky latex sap with a cooling property utilised to treat various ailments, such as headaches caused by hunger, thirst or sickness. Photo: P.A. Clarke, Wauchope, Northern Territory, 2007. 8 Journal of the Anthropological Society of South Australia Vol. 33 - 2008 Philip Clarke- Aboriginal healing practices and Australian bush medicine Aboriginal
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